


aether above

by kurgaya



Series: flowerless [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 03:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7601938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"We'll show them," Kuina breathes, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth as she looks to her sister. "Girls can be swordsmen too."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Zahra nods dutifully, holding her tongue between a jaw clenched tight enough to crack; I think I’m boy, she wants to say - he wants to say, but doesn't, feeling sick as his stomach tightens. Traitor, it seems to taunt, his body a riot against him, traitor, traitor, you're a traitor, she just wants you to understand, she just wants you to be a girl.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	aether above

**Author's Note:**

> The **implied/referenced child abuse** is definitely more on the 'referenced' spectrum. I have also tagged **suicidal thoughts** just to be careful, as there are also two lines in the second scene that express Zoro's lack of caring whether he lives or dies, although he does not explicitly seek death. **Major character death** , of course, is Kuina. Please be aware.
> 
> In canon, we basically know shit-all about Koshiro except that he's a sexist that reinforces his daughter's fears about becoming a swordsman, and frankly I've decided that's bollocks so.
> 
> I swear this has a happy ending.

 

She’s nine when her knees hit the street, when her hands graze the gravel and stick bloody to the stones. Her hair’s a grubby, dark and rotten brown, chopped shaggy into shape over a gaunt, sickly face and shoulders, but it covers the quiver of her lip as she scrambles from the dirt, a thick, fur-like fringe hiding the scarlet handprint that burns across her cheek in shame.

The door to the only normality she’s ever known slams shut behind her, the voice raised wrathful and tired ( _get out, get OUT, I am so fucking tired of THIS SHIT_ ) still raging from inside, but if there is one thing she has learnt that could prepare her for this lawless, backstreet world before her, it’s to keep her mouth shut.

Don’t ask for anything. Do it yourself.

She peels herself up from the path and picks the pebbles from her palms, wincing but never crying out as her fingernails dot with blood. The scratches across her cheek and nose hurt more anyway, the skin throbbing red and hot and only more so as she scrubs at her eyes with a sleeve. Getting kicked out is not a new experience - she’s nine and she has known which back-alleys around the house are best for sleeping in for years - but that invisible line which she’s never understood and yet still laboured to avoid has finally been crossed, it seems. The crash of the door, the creak of the house, and the quake of its walls toll like church bell in her ears, a low and sinister _good riddance_ casting her to this graveyard of streets, and she doesn’t kid herself by turning back.

Instead, looking left to the wilderness and right to the town in which she’s never lived, she hugs herself tightly and sniffs once, twice, and then no more, figuring that _if this is how it’s going to be_ , then what does it matter which way she goes?

Distantly, although she is not to know as a child of nine, the _clack_ of wood against wood calls of a destiny, and beyond that, beyond further than she can even imagine at this moment, the coastal shores of _forever_ guide her on.

 

 

 

One day, a day deep in summer, the sun high and hot over a courtyard of concrete, shadowless stone of a military compound cracked in the blistering heat, a boy with a straw hat and the heart of a king will recolour this world in fearless blues and reds and dreams of gold, and will laugh at a man with hair of bottle green and eyes of daring and coal.

 _You’re the pirate hunter, Roronoa Zoro?_ he will ask, treasure of ribbon and straw bouncing at his shoulders, and the man before him will lift a head of pride and pain to stare at this boy who smiles and strides only in the silhouette of the sky.

But for now, she is neither a _pirate hunter_ nor _Roronoa Zoro_ , and there is another man, one with a kindly face and wrinkles at his eyes, jet-black hair on the edges of grey and tied back into a smooth sophistication. The wide, sweeping sleeves and darkly-dyed cotton of his robe are a peculiar sight for the back-alleys of this town, but he crouches down as though he has no care for the filth, the elevation that his wooden sandals provide insufficient in raising him above the muck. He holds out a very large, very _tempting_ loaf of bread in offer for her compliance, and she sneers at it, charcoal eyes warning of fire from beneath her tangling hair.

“D’you think I’m stupid, old man?” she barks, curling further into her tiny body of ten. The stranger just smiles, crow’s feet wrinkles crinkling behind his circular spectacles, and she hisses like a cat in a corner as the food continues its inviting bob in front of her nose.

“Quite the opposite, in fact,” the man says. “You see, I am a teacher in Shimotsuki village’s dojo, just beyond the hills, and I am on my way to the city in search of a new student.”

“This ain’t the city,” she growls; backstreets all look the same, their winding, narrow walls and sticky, soiled paths enclosed in shadow at the end of the day, but even she can tell the difference between a dump of a town and a dump of a _city_.

“Yes,” he says, certainly wearing enough money to know that. He breaks off a chunk of the bread as though a smaller offering will entice her to cast away her common sense, but when she refuses to take it once again, he still only smiles. “But I should think that I need go no further now. What’s your name, child?”

This earns him a glower, and one supplemented with a hiss of, “I don’t want anything from you,” that only prompts the stranger to laugh.

“My name is _Koshiro_ ,” he introduces, and she turns up her nose, wishing that he would leave her alone. Minding her own business down here in the dirt hadn’t been an invitation for some starry-eyed teacher to talk to her; a _lot_ of people with “good intentions” have tried to engage her in conversation over the past year. After the first few times her naivety backfired, leaving her cold, hungry, _and_ hurt, she cut her heart from her sleeve and cursed a wild _fuck you_ at the idea of _trust_.

“I don’t care.”

“Would you be interested in learning swordsmanship?” Koshiro asks, shifting a little and his knees creaking at the jolt. He doesn’t move any closer but she flinches anyway, reaching for the wall at her back as though the outside world is willing to protect her.

“No,” she spits, the prospect of this man pulling a knife on her now a very real threat. Guns she can outrun - and outrun she _has_ \- but blades are weapons that even the dumbest people can wield; if Koshiro is a teacher of _swordsmanship_ then his skill could be next to none. This realisation both terrifies and intrigues her, she cannot deny, but she doesn’t know if that’s due to the thought of _mastering_ the blade or merely, maybe, perhaps rightfully so, dying upon one.

“Would you be interested in a roof over your head, at any least?” Koshiro asks, and it’s all she can do not to snort - what sort of question is _that_?

 _Yes_ , she thinks, growling instead, “Get lost.”

“I have a daughter about your age,” Koshiro continues, talking as though he hasn’t heard her. “I am afraid that I cannot _get lost_ any more than I could abandon her to this life. Truly, I believe you would thrive in the dojo.”

 _Right_ , she’s heard that before, and she tells him as such, snapping, “You don’t know shit-all about me.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Koshiro agrees, but something in his eyes seems to argue, something that glints behind his glasses and sees more than what should be possible. “I would only ask, in return for my becoming your teacher, that you be a most studious pupil. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“That’s it?” she breathes, brow furrowing in doubt. Shaking her fringe from her eyes, she squints a charcoal suspicion at his persistent smile, wondering what it is about this man and his _lies_ that she wants to believe.

(Maybe it’s the bread).

“That’s it,” Koshiro assures, unfazed in the face of her ferocity as though he is accustomed to the glares from street-rat children; maybe she’s not the first of his students to be lured from the back-alleys - _not_ , that is, that she’s his _student_.

“What ‘bout the bread?” she asks.

“Yes, you can have that as well.” He presses the torn loaf into her tiny hands to make a point, and she experiences a moment of pure terror ( _if he’s going to kill me at least he’s nice enough to feed me first_ ) at the possibility of it being tampered with _or worse_ , before ripping off a corner and stuffing it into her mouth. It tastes _good_ , baked-warm and squidgy and worth far more than gold in her hands, and half of it has been eaten before she remembers that this is playing straight into Koshiro’s hands.

(Yep, it’s the bread).

“May I have your name?” the teacher asks - and that’s the trap, isn’t it, that’s how this _works_ , and yet she finds herself offering a response anyway. She shrugs, mumbling around another mouthful of bread: this, at least, is a question she can answer, if only because she has no answer to give.

“Don’t have one.”

(She’s never had one).

“Ah,” Koshiro replies - _ah_ , if that’s really the appropriate response. “Then may I bestow you with one? All great swordsmen must have a name to be remembered by.”

 _Whatever_ , she doesn’t say, too busy munching through the last of the loaf. Koshiro laughs at the sight of her cheeks bulging out, and there _is_ something fatherly about him, she realises, so maybe the existence of his daughter isn’t a lie.

“Hmm. Is _Zahra_ to your preference?”

She shrugs again, and so he decides, “ _Roronoa Zahra_ ,” and the surname, if nothing else about this situation (his kindness, his sharing of food, and offer of shelter), strikes her as peculiar.

“Roronoa?”

“Yes, I quite like it,” Koshiro replies cheerfully, which isn’t what she - Zahra, she supposes - had been going for, but she simply plops the final piece of food into her mouth at the response, deciding that she doesn’t care for whatever cloud he pulled that name from.

 _Her_ name from.

“Would you like to come with me to learn the way of the sword, Zahra?” he asks, extending a hand of scars and rough, thickly-lined skin, and Zahra takes a breath before taking his hand, wondering what it is that she really has to lose.

 

 

 

The Isshin dojo is located just on the outskirts of Shimotsuki village, closer to the townspeople than it is to the coast, and surrounded by fields of a pastoral green on all sides. The sea is a phenomenon that Zahra can only imagine, but she has little interest in the world beyond these rocky shores. Gravel and dirt are things that she understands; hit the ground and the ground hits back, but the ocean waves and tides and the currents that churn its emerald infinitude are forces that she doesn’t dare to challenge.

Her first impression of the dojo is wood and nails and tiles, things that can break, things she can escape from, but homely in its own way, the floors polished and shoes tidy and the whole place loved and cared for.  Zahra is none of these things, an unkempt, flea-ridden, scarecrow of a child, but she does her best to arrange her shoes neatly by the door as Koshiro shows her around.

When they reach Koshiro’s home, her mangy presence has drawn a small crowd. Women from the town, perhaps mothers to some of the many young _male_ students here, Zahra can only assume, are conversing in low tones just outside, but their discussion ceases as Koshiro approaches, Zahra scurrying along behind.

“My, Koshiro-san,” one of them greets, bird-like eyes darting between the teacher’s easy smile and Zahra’s terrible scowl. “I thought you were going to the city in search of a new apprentice?”

“You thought correctly,” Koshiro replies, one hand reaching behind Zahra’s head to do _what_ she doesn’t care to find out, flinching away from his touch. He either doesn’t notice the way she grits her teeth or simply insists despite this, fingertips brushing her hair and pushing her forward into the gossiping gaggle. To Zahra’s surprise, the motion could be described as _gentle_ , but she refuses to give him the benefit of the doubt, inching further into the hawk-eyed circle of women if only to escape her uncertainty about Koshiro’s touch.

“This is _Zahra_ , and she will be training under me from now on. If you ladies would please excuse us for this evening, I would like to find my daughter.”

“Oh, of _course_ , of _course_ ,” the women mutter, and as Koshiro thanks them and leads Zahra along the last few steps away from the gossip, a girl peeks around the front door of the house. The women continue to squabble and whisper between them, their eyes and pointing like vultures surveying their prey, but it’s the girl - the daughter, perhaps - that Zahra looks to, noting the mud on her skirt and her crow’s nest hair.

“Kuina, this is Zahra,” Koshiro introduces, a wary smile replacing the girl’s scowl as she diverts her attention from the women to her father. Koshiro ushers Zahra closer, but this time he does so verbally, simultaneously blocking the two girls from the townspeople’s view. “She’s going to be joining the dojo.”

Behind them, the townswomen continue to fuss and mutter their disapproval at this, but Kuina’s eyes seem to brighten as she catches Zahra’s gaze, and just for a moment, despite the whispers of _but she’s a girl_ in the air, she seems so very, defiantly _alive_.

 

 

 

“There’s never been another girl in the dojo before,” Kuina explains that night, tipping Zahra’s head of grease and brambles back to wash her hair. _I’m ten, I can do it_ , Zahra had argued, clutching her knobby knees in the tub as the other girl approached with soap and a towel, but Kuina had insisted just as her father had, although her mouth had tipped down where his had lifted up.

 _You’re too small to be ten_ , she had said, splatting a handful of soap over Zahra’s head. _And what colour’s your hair even meant to be?_

 _Brown_ , had been Zahra’s mutter, and Kuina had laughed as though this was the stupidest thing she had ever heard.

_It’s closer to green!_

“I’m sorry,” Zahra says now, unsure on how to take Kuina’s observation. Apologies are usually the safest response though, and she cringes as another cup of water pours over her head, the temperature warm and Kuina’s hands careful, but the sensation unwelcome all the same.

“It’s stupid,” Kuina huffs, pausing to pick a twig from the other’s crown. Truthfully, Zahra is bathing in her own filth at the moment, but the water is pleasant and the promise of dinner ( _once you’re clean, Zahra_ ) is enough to hold her tongue. “Everybody seems to think that boys are _better_.”

Zahra says nothing. All she knows is that the boys on the streets had been raucous and violent, the shopkeepers and innkeepers only more so, and she had been more scared of them than she had of not eating - but strangely envious, too, of the way they fought and spat and were never once called _delicate_.

“I think they’re wrong,” Kuina goes on, seeming not to care for Zahra’s silence. She squirts another mound of soap into her hand, apparently deciding that one wash is not enough, and then as she returns to scrubbing Zahra’s hair, she begins to hum a nonsensical tune as though her twelve year old attention span has forgotten her frustrations already.

 

 

 

Living with Koshiro and Kuina undermines all of Zahra’s expectations of what it means to live in a _home_. Koshiro is kind - _truly_ kind, even as the days creep into weeks and still Zahra lingers in this fanciful village, waking every day on a soft bed to hot meals and baths and _good mornings_ and _how are yous_ , still waiting for the other shoe to drop - but it’s in Kuina that Zahra finds a friend. Quick-witted and rough around the edges, prone to bruises and grazes, and welcoming of the blisters on her hands, Kuina is loud where her father is not, but gentle where her father is too, their hearts so _open_ to the idea of this half-starved, ill-mannered _freak_ staying forever that Zahra doesn’t know what to think.

She honestly hadn’t expected to survive the trip to Shimotsuki, let alone be given a bath, a meal, a place to sleep and then wake, come morning, in the same bed with the same blankets and all of her limbs, and then offered a bowl of breakfast.

“Hey,” Kuina says, ducking her pre-teen bedhead of spots under the table that Zahra has dived beneath, expression contorting into confusion as she spies the younger girl curled up on the floor. “Would you like some tea?”

“Tea?” Zahra mutters; no one has ever offered her that before. Her parents would shout at her to make it all of the time - at least, until they starting drinking out of bottles instead.

Kuina crouches down but doesn’t approach, regarding Zahra’s tiny form with an intuition beyond the twelve years she has spent loved and cared for. “Yeah. We’ve only got mint though ‘cause father keeps drinking all the jasmine. You like mint?”

 _What’s mint_ , Zahra would ask, were questions not usually acknowledged with fists. “I don’t know,” she admits, mumbling the safest option, and Kuina smiles.

“You wanna come out from under there and find out?”

Zahra isn’t sure if her answer is _yes_ or _no_ , but she crawls out anyway at the beckon of Kuina’s hand.

None of the other students, Zahra learns, live in Koshiro’s home. Many live in the village, and many more lodge in the dojo, here only to train from homes so far away, but it is only Zahra who takes meals with the teacher and his daughter, who sleeps under their roof, and who slowly wonders if this is how it feels to have a _home_. Koshiro asks after her biological parents only once (but his smile slips a _lot_ , when she eats, when she hides, when she defaults to silence and fear), but Kuina never does, so Zahra decides that she likes Kuina far more.

She seems to be the only one though. The boys at the dojo treat Kuina with disdain; during spars they sneer but hold their tongues, aware that she is the daughter of a man they dare not disrespect, but beyond the safety of the dojo, they bully and taunt and cast her achievements aside. Kuina gives back just as fiercely as she gets, spitting and snapping and fighting to prove her worth, but she is one against many - one against a social belief that she cannot kick, bite, or punch into agreeing.

When Zahra picks up a wooden training sword for the first time, one becomes _two_.

Kuina becomes _sister_ , and Koshiro becomes -

 _Sensei_ , for now.

 

 

 

Koshiro has asked her to be studious, and so studious Zahra becomes. Swordsmanship is a way of life, he tells her, the way she eats, sleeps, moves and _breathes_ , and considering her previous way of life had been scrounging around and waiting to _die_ , Zahra will take swordsmanship any day. If dedicating herself to a life of learning is the price for a roof over her head and a front door that she will never be kicked out of, then that is a small price to pay. As far as Zahra is concerned, being a _good student_ means three square meals a day and earning bruises only from training, from trying, from slipping up and pushing on - or at least, she hopes so, anyway. Koshiro has yet to raise a hand to her in anger, but she isn’t going to push her luck; she knows his skill now, she’s seen him dance and strike and _win_ , and she can understand why Kuina looks up to her father so.

Zahra would look up to Koshiro too, were she not looking to Kuina instead.

Kuina has everything that Zahra wants, she is coming to realise: a headstrong and driven personality, a goal clearly in her mind. She has fists that hit and feet that never run, a grin that only brightens with bruises and blood, a firecracker temper, and a gaze that rivals the boys in the dojo, her chin lifted up, her jawline strong and masculine sharp.

Zahra is small and skinny, _too_ skinny, prone to yes when she means no and silence when she means yes. She bruises easily, a tolerance she never achieved, and her hair clumps into knots, long and bedraggled where Kuina’s is fine and short. She’ll spit and snap but only in defence, and for all that the dojo boys laugh and hate, and for all that they’re _wrong_ in snarling that _girls can’t be swordsmen_ , she can’t help but watch them with something akin to awe.

Kuina growls at them, tells them to _get lost; boys are stupid_ , she says, _they’re mean and ugly and stupid_ , and Zahra feels something inside of her churn.

“Are they all like that?” she asks, and Kuina blinks past the tip of her training blade to scowl an infuriated expression at Zahra’s quiet confusion.

“Yeah, _probably_ ,” Kuina grumbles, huffing as she gestures for Zahra to take her place. The wooden sword passes between blistered skin, two pairs of hands rough and sweaty from enduring hours in the sun, and Zahra’s hold slips around the hilt.

She adjusts her footing, raises her head, and lunges into a swing. The sword _whooshes_ through the sizzling backyard air, gravel crunching beneath her, and as Zahra steadies herself, Kuina smiles wide and bright.

“It’s okay - who wants to be like a _boy_ anyway?” she says with a laugh, guiding Zahra to correct her next lunge. “You and I can stick together. We’re sisters, and I like having you around.”

“Really?” Zahra replies, wondering if this means that Koshiro, too, is sincere. Truthfully, he’s never given her any _reason_ to doubt him (not _once_ in these past few months, no matter the rules she breaks and the limits she tests) but then, when has anybody ever given her a reason not to doubt them?

“Yeah! Father knows everything about swordsmanship, and you _are_ pretty good, for a kid. Not as good as me though!” Kuina says with a laugh, sounding quite content to boast about her skill.

Zahra lifts the training blade and stares at it, asking softly, “Could I be as good as you?”

Kuina squints as though something in Zahra’s appearance will be enough to answer this. “If you tried _really_ hard maybe,” she decides, wobbling her chin in thought. “I _am_ going to be the best, but you could be the _second_ -best.”

A voice calling up from deep inside of Zahra isn’t sure that she wants to be _second-best_ at anything, but then maybe, she rationalises, thinking of pain and hungry and cold, endless nights in the alley, being somebody’s second choice is better than being their _last_. After all, she had been her parents’ last choice even before they cast her to the streets; they had made that exceptionally clear.

“‘Cause if you want to be the _best_ ,” Kuina goes on, unheeding of the hardships that her kind-of sister has endured. She smirks now, twelve and ready to challenge the world, and says, “Then we’re going to have to _fight_ for it.”

They _could_ , Zahra knows, just as she knows that Kuina would never lose.

“But you’re going to be the best,” she counters; she’s known Kuina only for a matter of months now, but already Kuina has declared her dream something close to a _billion_ times. Her conviction is indisputable, and even if Zahra wanted to, she would never contradict her adoptive family. If Kuina wants to be the best, then the best Kuina will be, and as her sister laughs and urges their training on, Zahra decides that _Kuina: the Greatest Swordsman in the World_ has a particularly nice ring to it.

 

 

 

“Sensei,” she asks one day, the title like a name rolling familiar and firm from her tongue. _Koshiro_ does not infer enough respect, but _father_ is a word that Zahra cannot bring herself to use, cannot bring herself to feel as though she deserves to use it, not with how Kuina utters it with such adoration, so _sensei_ is a compromise that Koshiro allows.

 _Zahra_ , he had said the first time she had stumbled, her panic forcing _father_ through lips that still expected to be struck. He had smiled even as she clenched a jaw awaiting a bruise, her eyes tracking the harmless twiddle of his hands. _You may call me whatever you are comfortable with, child_.

“Yes, Zahra?” Koshiro says this time, setting aside his work to give her his full attention.

Zahra slips into the office at the beckon, one hand clutching the door and the other, a pair of scissors which she presents to the teacher. She hopes the gesture will an adequate explanation by itself, but when Koshiro merely waits for her to continue, Zahra has to struggle for the words she rarely uses - a question, a _please_. “Will you cut my hair?”

Koshiro rises with a soft, _of course_ , and motions for the scissors. Zahra passes them obediently and then trots behind him as they detour to the bathroom.

“How would you like it?” he asks, handing her a mirror to hold. Zahra frowns at her scruffy - yet healthier - reflection, having to scoop her fringe away from bright eyes and round cheeks to even do so.

“Really short?” she ventures, and Koshiro hums, tapping the circular end of the scissors against his chin.

“How short? To here?” he asks, tucking a strand behind her ears, and Zahra squirms a little on the chair.

“Shorter than Kuina’s,” she replies, trying to explain the picture she is imagining. Trimming her hair is easy enough by herself - grab and _snip_ \- but Zahra knows she won’t be able to cut a straight line above her neck. “Like… like a boy?”

“A boy?” Koshiro repeats, prompting Zahra to nod. She hopes her request isn’t silly (Koshiro is always saying that she can _ask_ for things, but it still feels strange), but it doesn’t seem to be as the teacher confirms, “Is that what you want?”

Zahra tries to smile, saying, “Yes sensei,” and Koshiro chuckles as he reaches for a hairbrush.

The women in the village don’t approve of the new style, but then they don’t approve of Zahra in any shape or form, so their whispers of criticism come as no surprise. Zahra does her best to ignore them, maintaining a steady gaze on the shopping list rather than their hawk-like stares; even their squabbling could rival the birds’, their laughter shrill and cackling like that of the crows that nest atop the dojo, and Zahra grits her teeth at the sound. She isn’t sure what makes them hate her so; Kuina always hisses that _it’s because we’re girls_ , but that can’t be right, Zahra ponders, because the townspeople are girls _too_ \- _and what difference does it make_ , she asks her sister, _if we’re girls or boys_ , and when Kuina shoots her a funny look and begins to rant about _rights_ and _roles_ and doesn’t _really_ answer the question Zahra had intended, she holds her tongue.

She likes Kuina, but she’s not _like_ Kuina. This becomes only more apparent as the months rolls into a year, the hot summer sun sizzling into autumn and then slumbering through winter, the dojo never changing as the world revolves around it. Zahra’s eleventh birthday passes with the silence of winter, a date as forgotten as the spring-blossoms long-since buried beneath the hail and the quieting snow, but Koshiro and Kuina still gift her with presents when they learn of this, and promise to mark the date on the calendar for the coming year. Truthfully, winter is Zahra’s least-favourite time of the year; December on the streets was a month of hunger and fear, and January was only worse, her recollection of those days broken into memories of white and ice and crying until she slept herself to death. Winter in Shimotsuki is filled with warmth: hot food and tea, a burning fireplace and blankets galore, but outside the snow still falls and the sun refuses to rise, and Zahra waits eagerly for spring to bloom again.

When Zahra reaches eleven, Kuina hits thirteen - and thirteen hits back _hard_. Even at home, away from the dojo, the boys that taunt and the sweat and the _clack_ of the blades like the beat of adulthood marching upon them, Kuina is adapting to the turn of the time. Still she laughs and plays and fights and trains, but there is a sadness about her, an _anger_ about her that brews as the days pass, and stirs as the townspeople take note - the boys, their teasing _different_ now, and the women, calling and questioning _why don’t you grow up into a nice young lady?_

Zahra doesn’t understand, but maybe Kuina does. They don’t talk about it, but it is a conversation that is incessantly occurring between them - when they punch a group of boys for pulling at Kuina’s skirt, when Kuina clutches her stomach and quietly asks for tea, and when Kuina trains more and more and more, only to for their classmates to grow taller and stronger before them.

Kuina ages into envy - and Zahra ages into fear. Being like Kuina becomes the _last_ thing on her mind, but the inevitability of reaching thirteen is something that she cannot escape, and growing up to be that _nice young lady_ that everybody will expect her to be is a prospect that only terrifies Zahra. Her panic is unreasonable, she knows that’s what people would say; she can’t explain the cause (the dojo boys? The townswomen? Kuina’s anger?) and she can’t even put the feeling of _no, no, god no, I can’t_ into words. It’s just _there_ , a constant whisper at the back of her mind or a pair of spectacles over her eyes, as if the glass is tinted so that all she experiences is a _skewed_ perception, a church mosaic of a shattered whole, of a scrambled, discoloured mess of _something_ that she is going to become.

_But what if that’s not what she wants to become?_

“Koshiro-sensei?” she asks after dinner one evening, trying to frantically scrub the bowl before it slips out of her hands. It’s her turn to do the washing-up - names were some of the first words that Koshiro taught her to read - and she passes Koshiro the bowl when he beckons for it.

Kuina is… somewhere. Koshiro had looked troubled when his daughter excused herself from the table, so maybe he knows. Zahra doesn’t press, unsure if she wants her sister to overhear this conversation anyway, and instead drops her voice to barely a whisper.

“Is there something wrong with me?”

The squeak of a cloth against the bowl ceases. Zahra dares not look up at Koshiro’s expression. She almost drops a spatula onto the floor.

“Can you explain to me what has made you feel this way?” Koshiro asks gently, and when he adds the bowl to the drying stack, the _clink_ of porcelain is a thunderclap in the silence of Zahra’s breath. She jumps almost a foot into the air at the sound - she’s not scared of him, no; he’s never struck her and he never will, but she can’t help but default to defence when she’s unsure - and he steadies her with a careful hand before she tumbles from the stool.

“Zahra?” he prompts, firmer this time. It’s almost, but not quite, his _sensei_ voice, but Zahra finds that the words come easier if she imagines that it is.

“The boys at the dojo laugh at me because I look like a boy, and the women in the village say that I should act more like a girl,” she explains to the kitchen tap, hoping that she makes at least a little bit of sense when she adds in a moment of realisation, “But I don’t _want_ to act more like a girl, I want to be a swordsman.”

“You can be a swordsman _and_ a girl, Zahra,” Koshiro reminds sternly, but with a hint of a smile to suggest that it’s not _her_ that he’s angry at. “Surely Kuina has made that clear to you?”

“Yes, sensei,” Zahra replies, trying to find the words to explain that she _knows_ that, that she would _never_ argue that girls can’t succeed in swordsmanship because they _can_ , because Kuina’s going to be the _best_ , but that isn’t what she’s _talking about_ , but only managing to stumble over a blurted, “But Kuina’s -” before snapping her mouth shut.

“Yes?” Koshiro prompts, eyebrows rising high over his glasses, and Zahra swallows and thinks -

 _Kuina’s a girl_.

“Older,” she decides, staring at a soap bubble and feeling a little sick. “Kuina’s older.”

“She’s growing up,” Koshiro agrees, motioning for the spatula that Zahra is still scrubbing. “Is that what you’re worried about? Adolescence is a difficult time, but it’s nothing to be afraid of, child, it happens to all young girls.”

Whatever expression Zahra is wearing must be _terrible_ to draw such a note of worry from her teacher, and though this hadn’t been her intention (although what her intention _had_ been is lost to the toll of _Kuina’s a girl, she’s a girl, Kuina’s a girl!_ in Zahra’s ears), it’s too late to mask it now. She hands the utensil over and then plunges her hand back into the sink to hide how it shakes, swishing the water around until she finds something else to attack with a sponge.

“ _But_ _Kuina’s_ \- different,” she tries to clarify, catching herself at the last second. _Different_ doesn’t explain anything - of course Kuina’s different, she’s always been different, so, so different despite how hard Zahra tried to be _like her_ \- and when Koshiro’s eyes soften, Zahra knows that he doesn’t understand.

( _She_ doesn’t understand either, and maybe that’s part of the problem).

“Kuina’s going to be changing, yes, but so will you,” Koshiro says, eyes smiling behind the thick frames of his glasses. He doesn’t understand but he looks like he _wants_ to, and Zahra finds herself trying to smile if only to reassure him. “Growing up won’t change that you’re sisters, Zahra. You’re still going to be you.”

 _But I don’t want to be me_ , Zahra thinks. _I don’t want to be someone who’s going to grow up into a lady._

“Okay,” is what she says, still smiling her grimace-smile as she pulls a saucer out of the sink. The water is tepid and murky now, and Zahra wonders if it could distort her reflection into whatever it is she wants to become. “Thank you, sensei.”

There is a moment of hesitation before his reply. “You’re welcome, Zahra.”

 

 

 

Zahra steps up her training, because she doesn’t know what else to do. One sword becomes two, and the new weight in her other hand shifts her equilibrium enough to distract from Kuina’s incredulous stare; it seems to centre her, the two blades a perfect pair, and with them both in her grasp as she tackles her training anew, Zahra feels like she could do anything. The _cl-clack_ of two blades just a swish apart is a sound she could come to sing to; there is an _elegance_ about dual wielding that she strives to refine, ardent about two blades as she never had been with one - the power, the ferocity, the almost impenetrable defence. The equal weights offer a balance that Zahra has never experienced before - not cowering and small in her first house, not frightened and starved on the streets, and maybe not ever, not anymore, not with this strange sensation welling up within her - and she feels silly, sometimes, with how she reveres her two blades when, really, they are only _one more_ of what she had before.

She can’t explain the feeling, so she doesn’t, just as she tries not to listen to the townswomen, the dojo boys, and the voice in the back of her head that asks -

_Well what’s wrong with being a lady?_

Kuina becomes the only person in the dojo that Zahra cannot beat. _There's nothing wrong with being a lady_ , Zahra thinks every time she is forced to submit to her sister’s blade. _Kuina’s amazing and she's a lady, but I'm not Kuina, and I'm not -_

Not _what_ she isn't sure. All she knows is that she's _not_ \- not Kuina, not a swordsman, not liked by the village, not, not, _not_.

She trains. She learns. She tries to get Kuina to smile.

She bleeds.

“It’s okay,” Kuina soothes that _terrible_ day, holding her hand, showing her how to cope, how to control the pain, how to be _clean_. “It’s okay, this is natural. You don’t have to be scared.”

Zahra cries and cries and cries and isn’t sure why.

“It's all right,” Kuina promises, showing her how to control the mess but not how to get it to _stop_. “It’s just a part of growing up. _All_ the girls do it, so please don't cry, come on it's okay -”

And that’s how Koshiro finds them just a few minutes later - both of them crying on the bathroom floor surrounded by rags and laundry and the _stains_ of a future that they cannot escape, and after looking quite thrown for a second, the father kneels down to lay a hand on his daughter's head.

“Kuina,” he says, stroking her hair softly. “How about we break open that expensive hot chocolate that we bought in Goa? Could you go and put the kettle on?”

Kuina nods, and when Koshiro reaches over to scrub the tears from Zahra’s eyes, she tries to nod as well.

Koshiro ushers his daughter from the room, and then holds out his hands for Zahra. “How many mugs will it take for the tears to stop, hmm? Two and some cream?”

“Three?” Zahra sniffs, clasping her teacher’s hand as though he is all that holds her together, and Koshiro laughs.

 

 

 

“Boys have it easy,” Kuina grumbles once they’ve collectively drunk half the tub of hot chocolate, and the pain in Zahra’s stomach has faded to a dull throb that flares every time she moves. “They don't bleed like girls do.”

And all Zahra can think as she nurses the lukewarm mug in her hands is - _but I bleed_.

 

 

 

The boys at the dojo get taller and nastier, but Zahra doesn't, puberty changing her differently to her classmates - _the_ _other boys_ , perhaps, she sometimes cannot help but think. She's _different_ to them just as she's different to Kuina, but something about their height, their breaking voices, their stubble, flat chests, and rough-and-tumble play draws Zahra just as she had been drawn to Kuina’s short hair, broken bones, and unyielding attitude once, many months ago.

Kuina gets stronger and faster to compensate. She's a warrior worthy of her goal, her fierce determination, and her father’s proud smiles, and as Koshiro pushes her harder than ever before, Kuina unsheathes her family’s beloved blade and rises up to the challenge.

 _“_ The Wadō Ichimonji would not let you draw her were you unworthy,” Koshiro explains, watching for the first time as Kuina _clicks_ the magnificent katana out of its sheath. “Use her well.”

“I will,” Kuina promises, holding the blade up to the light. The boys in the dojo look on with awe (with astonishment, with jealousy that they cannot hide) and Kuina accepts her inheritance with a bow before leaping forward and hugging her father.

She hugs Zahra too, afterwards, after their classmates have challenged and lost to Kuina’s spectacular skill.

"We'll show them," Kuina breathes, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth as she looks to her sister. Only one hit from her opponent had landed, and Kuina smiles through the pain. "Girls _can_ be swordsmen too."

Zahra nods dutifully, holding her tongue between a jaw clenched tight enough to crack; _I think I’m boy_ , she wants to say - _he_ wants to say, but doesn't, feeling sick as his stomach tightens like the churn of his monthly bleed. _Traitor_ , it seems to taunt, his body a riot against him, _traitor, traitor, you're a traitor, she just wants you to understand, she just wants you to be a girl_.

He doesn't tell Kuina, doesn't dare argue and throw her conviction back in her face. Girls _can_ be swordsman, and Kuina is, and she will be, and Zahra is _not_ \- he’s not, god he’s _not_.

(How is he supposed to tell Kuina that this whole time her sister has been a lie?)

Zahra doesn’t tell Koshiro either - doesn’t tell anybody. He goes on as he had, fighting and losing and bleeding and familiarising himself with the sound of _he_ on his tongue. _He_ , Zahra mutters with the swing of a blade. _Him_ , he adds with the second. It feels right and it feels good, just as dual wielding had when he held the identical blades in his hands for the first time. He still doesn’t feel like _the other boys_ , but Zahra likes the way it feels to have _I’m a boy_ roll in a murmur from his mouth.

 _I’m a boy_ , he thinks, and as the seasons turn again and his twelfth year approaches with the winter winds, Zahra thinks that he will _always_ be a boy.

Kuina fights her way into fourteen, besting everybody in the class. Training seems to be all that delights her anymore, so one night, as her hands cling to a training blade and she breathes fast and heavy into the evening air, knees grazed against the dirt and Zahra yielding beneath her, defeated once again, Zahra has an idea.

“Hey,” he says, scooping up the weapons he has lost. Even with _two_ blades he cannot beat Kuina, but his sister doesn’t smile at her victory as she slips effortlessly back into practice. Still, Zahra doesn’t let that bother him for now - he _knows_ his sister even if she doesn’t know _him_ , so if there’s anything that could cheer her up, it would be - “D’you wanna try the live steel?”

As expected, Kuina ceases her practice to blink at Zahra’s hopeful expression. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, glancing between her sibling and the wooden blade in her hands, but as the cold autumnal breeze bites at their skin, dark clouds warning of rain overhead, Kuina smiles - _really_ smiles.

And so does Zahra.

“I’ll have to get Wadō Ichimonji,” Kuina says, holding out the training blade for Zahra to take. They duel with live steel very, very rarely, and never this late at night, never without Koshiro watching from afar, but it never fails to cheer Kuina up. “I think she’s upstairs. Wait here?”

Zahra nods, saying _sure_ , saying _hurry back_ , and then never saying anything to his sister again.

The doctor says it was instantaneous, painless, and that she wouldn’t have felt a thing, and there’s no blood on the stairs, no mark on the stairs, and just a body on the stairs, just a sword on the stairs, just a father kneeling there, cradling a daughter that has never been fragile or broken or defeated - except in this moment, lying there at the cessation of a scream.

 _Would she have felt fear? Would she have feared this as she had feared nothing else?_ Zahra wonders, staring blankly as the doctor takes Kuina’s tiny body away. Koshiro emits a very strange sort of sound, unlike anything Zahra has ever heard from his mouth, but then doesn’t react when Zahra edges closer and clings to the back of his yukata.

Koshiro’s glasses are askew. Kuina’s neck was askew.

They bury her in the sanctuary of the dojo grounds, and Zahra cries the entire time.

 

 

 

November arrives anyway, the world spinning on as though it has no idea what it has done. With it come the rain and snow, the winter darkness and the hope for spring, and Zahra’s birthday passes forgotten once again. Truthfully, Koshiro forgets to do a lot of things now - eat, sleep, laundry, smile - but Zahra is capable of looking after himself. Looking after _Koshiro_ is harder, getting him to do anything is hard, but sometimes he makes them tea and other times he teaches as though nothing has changed, and occasionally he calls _Kuina_ when he beckons Zahra into the room.

Zahra never corrects him.

Fireworks colour the grisly new year sky, exploding bright and beautiful as though they can promise a jovial year. Zahra spends the first day of the year curled up against Koshiro’s side, wrapped up in blankets and slurping the last of the fancy hot chocolate. It doesn’t taste the same as it had before, but Koshiro suggests that they smother it in cream until it’s impossible to tell the difference.

It’s almost a waste of cream, but Zahra is learning that life doesn’t care about _wasting things_.

(Like dreams).

“Do you know why I named you _Roronoa_?” Koshiro asks - offhandedly, were he anybody else. Zahra starts at the question - at being addressed, Koshiro’s mourning a silence that has engulfed their household - and shakes his head, recalling his confusion at the surname when they met two years ago, but realising that he never questioned it after that fateful day.

Koshiro’s lips turn up, but he’s not smiling. Laying a hand on Zahra’s crown, he begins to stroke his fingers through the choppy strands there, and Zahra sighs a warm breath into the night.

“It was my wife’s maiden name,” Koshiro explains, “Kuina’s mother,” and he speaks with such _loss_ , with such heartbreak, with such a heavy, frightful sound, that Zahra cannot bear to ask after her; cannot bear the thought that he has taken away all Koshiro had left of his family.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, tears welling up anew. Weeks have passed _since Kuina_ \- and yet the pain is still raw, a wound that they share and refuses to heal. Her name has not been spoken in the house, the dojo, or even the village, but Zahra can feel it within every utterance, and can hear it in Koshiro’s every sigh. “I’m sorry, sensei, I’m so sorry! It was my idea!”

He can hear it even now, as Koshiro hugs him closer and soothes his hiccupping wails. “It’s okay, child. It’s not your fault, Zahra, it’s not your fault. It was only an accident, hush child, it was only an accident…”

“ _I just wanted her to be happy_ ,” Zahra sobs. “I just wanted to tell her - to tell her -”

Only, he shakes his head before finishing that cry, and buries his face in Koshiro’s robe.

 

 

 

Spring blossoms, and with it, Zahra throws himself back into training. He needs to be stronger, faster, fiercer and _better_ where his sister cannot, and he needs to remain undefeated in the dojo if he is going to make Koshiro proud. Sadness lingers over the household still, their hearts weighed down like the earth beneath the winter white, but though the days are _not-good_ , they are better with time. Kuina’s absence is like a presence lurking in the corners of their home, a shadow in the places where she would be, and Zahra finds himself avoiding her bedroom just as Koshiro avoids all conversation of her. The Wadō Ichimonji is locked away, waiting for a time when somebody as worthy as Kuina will unsheathe her blade, and even the other boys at the dojo keep their taunting mouths shut.

“My presence has been requested at a dojo on the other side of Goa,” Koshiro sighs one evening over dinner, and before he has even finished an explanation as to why he cannot _bear the thought_ of making the journey, Zahra is interrupting.

“You should go,” he declares, because he knows Kuina would.

Koshiro blinks astonishment over his glasses, but he doesn’t appear to be offended at the rather abrupt declaration. “Zahra -”

“You want to, so you should,” Zahra argues, snatching another piece of meat between his chopsticks. His teacher - his _adoptive father_ \- has not been himself since Kuina’s death, and while Zahra, too, sometimes just wants to curl under a duvet and hide from all memories of his sister, that is not what Kuina would want.

(What Kuina _really_ wanted is something Zahra cannot provide; _we’ll show them_ , she had announced, searching for a promise from a boy she believed to be her sister. _Girls can be swordsman too_ ).

(Only - Zahra cannot keep that promise).

“I’ll be gone about a week,” Koshiro argues, the words wobbling as though they’re enough to dissuade Zahra from insisting. “I don’t wish to leave you… on your own.”

“I lived on the streets for a year, sensei,” Zahra says a matter-of-factly, and Koshiro’s expression slips from uncertain to _scandalised_ at the audacity, his jaw dropping right down to the floor.

His expression is one-of-the-same when he returns from the visit, bee-lining with an anxious stride through the house to find Zahra watering the plants on the windowsill.

“Goodness _grief_ , Zahra, what happened to your hair?” is what he cries, and Zahra jumps a foot into the air at his shrieking intonation, the cup of water splashing all over the wall. The flowerpot creaks and threatens to fall, but then fortunately steadies itself as Zahra whirls around at the abrupt arrival of his adoptive father.

“Sensei! I - err - I wanted it to be a different colour,” he mumbles, clutching the half-empty glass as though it could do anything in the face of Koshiro’s incredulous stare. A _different colour_ is perhaps understating the particularly vivid shade of green that has swamped his previous brown; he had followed all of the instructions on the box, as he explains to Koshiro, but the green is an unexpected consequence of his efforts.

“Goodness,” Koshiro breathes, setting down his luggage and adopting an expression that is probably meant to be reassuring. “I’m sure it will wash out.”

“I like it,” Zahra insists, speaking quietly just in case Koshiro _doesn’t_. Green hadn’t been his intention at all; he’d just wanted to look less like _Zahra_ and more like somebody else, and dyeing his hair had seemed like a quick-fire way of becoming whoever it is that he wants to be.

“It’s… very green, child.”

“...Should I get rid of it?”

“No, no,” Koshiro assures, shaking his head firmly. _Goodness_ , he says again, eyes crinkling behind his glasses. “Only if you want to.”

Zahra smiles - really smiles, glad for this acceptance and glad for this moment of happiness despite the last few months - and Koshiro, after a flabbergast second in which he can only stare, smiles back.

 

 

 

Two swords become _three_. Koshiro laughs and laughs and laughs, but as Zahra mutters _oh_ and considering returning the third, he lays a hand on his student’s shoulder and says, “If you want to be the first swordswoman in the world to wield three blades, Zahra, then I fully support your decision.”

To which Zahra blurts, “I’m a boy,” and then shoves a sword into his mouth to stop himself from talking.

Koshiro’s hand doesn’t move - doesn’t clench, or lift, or hesitate, or _smack_ \- and Zahra is so _relieved_ that even before Koshiro has knelt down and found the words to respond, he has already burst into tears. _Thank you, thank you, thank you_ , he says in heaving sobs, words practically incoherent around the katana, and Koshiro just holds him for a moment, looking for all intents and purposes like he has no idea what to do.

“Zahra, child - _son_ ,” he begins, taking the katana away so that Zahra is free to wipe away his tears. Zahra hiccups, sucking in a gasping breath, and Koshiro asks frantically, “Come now, can you tell me what you’re thinking -?”

“Can I still be a _Roronoa_?” Zahra wheezes.

“Can you - _of course_ , of course you can. You’re always going to be a - oh, _oh Zahra_.” Koshiro presses his hand to his lips for just a moment, and then settles his hand back down on Zahra’s shoulder, hugging him tightly. Zahra hiccups again - or maybe Koshiro does - and then bows his green mop of hair into his father’s chest.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Koshiro mutters, sounding quite overwhelmed, and Zahra is helpless not to laugh. Koshiro laughs too, crying with it, and maybe he’s thinking about Kuina as Zahra is, thinking about the girl they’ve lost and the boy they’ve gained, and thinking about the dream that hangs abandoned over them, a dream that Zahra can never truly fulfil.

(Zahra can be _the greatest_ for his sister, but he cannot be a girl).

Koshiro will bestow Wadō Ichimonji upon him anyway - years from this moment, when Zahra is ready, unbeatable, and proud; and when Zahra takes a breath and reaches for the hilt for the first time, the katana will slide free from its confines to shine a brilliant silver up to the golden morning sky.

“Look after her,” Koshiro will ask, meaning the blade, Kuina’s inheritance, _his_ inheritance, _her_ dream, and Zahra will nod, promising that he’ll do the best he can to make his family proud.

Koshiro’s eyes will be bright behind his glasses. “We’re already proud,” he’ll reply, and as he waves his son a farewell, a good luck, a take care (and don’t get lost, _please_ ), he’ll manage to call at the very last moment, “The names of all great swordsmen are remembered forever.”

And his son will laugh, holding a white katana up high in the air. “I’ll ensure that _Roronoa Zoro_ is among them!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment as you go :)


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